Wed – 7/18: Come out today and roar!

If you haven’t watched Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s announcement of the indictments against the 12 Russian intelligence officers for interfering with the 2016 U.S. election, take a little time to do so now. Note that absolutely nothing is off the table in terms of future actions or discoveries. Read the indictment here.

All this information came out publicly on Friday, July 13, after Trump was personally informed by Rod Rosenstein. Then Trump went to Helsinki and blew the whole thing off.

Putin wanted Trump to win. And so he did. And maybe that’s the deal between Putin and Mr. “No-Collusion”. Maybe it’s simply the threat of a documentable leak about which states had their votes altered, how it was done, and by how much. Maybe if Trump doesn’t behave, we will get to see how America would deal, not just with its first illegitimate presidency, but with all the damage caused by the grifters and extremists who rode in on his coattails.

DETER Act [S. 2785] would lay out specific sanctions that would be automatically imposed on Russia if the intelligence community determines that it has interfered in the 2018 elections.

Check here for your senators. Neither Feinstein or Harris has signed on yet.

Protecting American Votes and Elections Act [S. 3049], would require all state and local elections to use equipment that produces voter-verified paper ballots that can be cross-referenced. Second, for all federal elections regardless of outcome, state and local governments would be required to conduct audits comparing digital ballots to a random selection of paper ballots. The latter policy would cover the 22 states that currently don’t require audits following elections.” (CA gets a “good” rating)

Check here for your senators. Neither Feinstein or Harris has signed on yet.

Action #3 – Got another 5 minutes?

Action #4 – Learn more about voting.

It’s pretty easy to fool a machine.

How can we make machine voting more secure? Add a paper trail that must be approved by a voter before they hit the “cast ballot” button. In 2004, California passed SB 1438, which required that all direct recording electronic voting systems receive federal qualification and include an accessible voter verified paper audit trail. California’s voting machine list here.

Let’s start here to be sure our voting systems are the most fair, secure and transparent. Here’s a visual of the basics from verifiedvoting.org

Reading/Resources about voting and the Trump/Putin connection:

Trump wants to send armed federal agents to polling places, a total 3rd world move of dictators. (Election Law Blog)(the hill)

Congressman Eric Swalwell has put together a very handy explainer on Trump’s ties to Russia – and put it on his official .gov page. Stunning. Go here to check it out.

This WaPo article is a nice explainer on connections between Trump and Putin.

And this New York Magazine article (“What if Trump Has Been a Russian Asset Since 1987?”) does a nice job of summarizing the situation we might find ourselves in. It’s also intensely frustrating, because Sarah Kendzior and others have been sounding the alarms on every single “new fact” that’s put forth in that article.

Speaking of Sarah Kendzior, she and Andrea Chalupa have launched a podcast called Gaslit Nation that goes deep into the Russian/Trump connections. They’ve only dropped one episode so far, but it’s a great listen. It’s also terrifying.

Internet voting cannot guarantee that the security, privacy, and transparency requirements for elections can all be met with any practical technology in the foreseeable future.